World War II veteran Edward Colucci with a book about the U.S. Army's 45th Infantry Division's campaigns, in which he served.
(Staten Island Advance/Virginia N. Sherry)

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. - DONGAN HILLS - From the beaches of North Africa in 1943, to the four-month-long battle against German forces at Anzio, Italy, in 1944, and the liberation of Dachau concentration camp in Germany in 1945, lifelong Newberry Avenue resident Edward Colucci saw historic action during World War II as a member of the 157th Infantry Battalion of the U.S. Army's 45th Infantry Division, famously nicknamed the Thunderbird Division.

When he was growing up at 28 Newberry Ave., one of seven children, the block "was a dirt road, with maybe 10 houses," he told the Advance last week, in an interview in his home across the street.

The proud recipient of a Bronze Star and now 92 years young, Colucci shared some memories from his years in combat in the European theater as he bravely served his country.

SHIPPING OUT

A graduate of PS 11 in Dongan Hills and McKee High School in St. George, Colucci was inducted into military service in January 1942, a month after Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor.

He received basic training at Camp Croft, S.C.

"I had a mechanical background, so they sent me to school to learn how to fix weapons. I got a certificate in armor repair – rifles, machine guns, small artillery," he explained. "After I got out of that, I was sent to the National Guard Division, but all the jobs were taken there, so they handed me a rifle."

Additional instruction followed at a base near Boston, "as a rifleman, and in other small weapons. I did good on the 60mm mortar, so they put me in that squad as a gunner. It was a National Guard division. I was regular Army, and the purpose was to get the Guard up to combat strength," he said.

He recalled a memorable practice landing in Martha's Vineyard, Mass. "We were in a small boat, and the weather was bad and foggy. The seaman operating the boat was afraid to go in, so he dropped anchor. We stayed overnight in the boat, and landed in the morning. Everyone clapped when we arrived."

Colucci shipped out from Boston, traveling across the Atlantic Ocean on a civilian transport ship, with about 1,000 other soldiers, according to his estimation. "The weather wasn't bad, but it took us 21 days to cross. We zigzagged a lot to avoid German submarines," he said.

The first stop was somewhere on the coast of North Africa – he could not recall a more precise location – "where we made a practice landing. We were not there for very long, maybe a week or two."

ITALIAN CAMPAIGN

Next came a landing in Sicily, and Colucci recalled some still-vivid memories of his experiences during the liberation of this strategic Italian island in July and August 1943. "About 50 of us were ordered to take a hill, and they left part of our group (another 50 men) behind to support us, in a wooded area at the bottom of the hill," he said.

"We advanced up the hill and, as this happened, the Germans shelled the group supporting us," he recalled. Overcome by emotion, Colucci needed some time before he was able to continue.

"Quite a few were killed and wounded," he finally said. "We eventually took that hill," he reported proudly.

Colucci also remembered a lone Italian solider that he and his comrades spied in a trench "when we first landed in Sicily." A member of his unit, who spoke Italian, called out to this soldier to surrender, but the unexpected response was the lobbing of a grenade that hit and killed the Italian-speaking G.I. The men in the unit immediately retaliated: "We each put a bullet in him," Colucci said.

"After that day, everyone was really careful," he added. "A lot of Italian soldiers were killed unnecessarily because no one wanted to take a chance."

His view was that "the Italians really didn't want to fight us," noting that he once witnessed an Italian soldier, after he was wounded, "cursing Mussolini. I'll never forget that."

Another recollection focused on Salerno – on the west coast of Italy's mainland, south of Naples – where Allied landings commenced on Sept. 9, 1943. "Half my squad was captured there," Colucci recalled. "We advanced too far, and the Germans were behind us, with tanks. When the fellows in my squad saw that, they started running. Me and a few others hid in a ditch, stayed there until night-time, and then got back to our division." One of the Army soldiers captured by the Germans found and visited Colucci after the war ended, and reported that he was held as a prisoner-of-war, doing forced labor "on farms in Germany."

Colucci also saw action at Anzio, on the Italian coast about 30 miles south of Rome, where some of the most brutal fighting of World War II raged from January to May 1944. U.S. combat casualties there numbered 2,800 killed, 11,000 wounded, and another 2,400 missing or taken prisoner.

Edward Colucci, who served in the U.S. Army' s 45th Infantry Division during World War II, points out his Bronze Star hanging on a wall in his home.
(Staten Island Advance/Virginia N. Sherry)

LIBERATING FRANCE

After the Italy campaign, the Thunderbird Division was "back on the ships for the invasion of southern France," Colucci said.

His unit next saw action at St. Maxime, on France's Mediterranean coast. "We had to take the beachhead, and the Navy played a big part in shelling, to support us.

"We met the Germans there – it was not too bad – and we advanced very fast." As the troops marched north through France, on foot, heading toward Grenoble in the Alps, civilians "put out American flags," Colucci remembered. "In one town, the Germans started a counterattack. We had to leave, and people took all the flags back in. I'll never forget that."

He also remembers that "some of the French men wanted to join our outfits to fight the Germans, and we said sure, but they took off as soon as things got a little hot." Another memory: As the Allies liberated France from German occupation, "they took the girls that had had affairs with German soldiers and shaved their heads."

DACHAU HORRORS

Colucci's combat service ended in Germany, in 1945, but not before he witnessed, up close, the depravity of the Nazi regime.

Say the word Dachau, and he almost visibly shudders. "That was awful – we were one of the first outfits into Dachau," he said softly, recalling the concentration camp near the small city of the same name, not far from Munich. He witnessed most of the surviving camp residents "very weak, without clothes."

After the 45th Infantry Division completed its successful drive on Munich, the next objective was the liberation of Dachau. Three divisions arrived there on April 29, 1945, finding over 30,000 prisoners in horrific conditions. "We could not believe what we saw," Colucci said, shaking his head as he described seeing "dead, naked bodies on (railway) flatcars." His memory is accurate.

"On April 28, the day before liberation (of Dachau), a train bearing about 40 or so railway cars arrived at the camp," the U.S. Holocaust Museum reports on its website. "It had left Buchenwald four weeks earlier, on April 7, filled with more than 5,000 prisoners.

"With few provisions, almost 2,000 inmates died during the circuitous route that took them from Thuringia through Saxony to Czechoslovakia and into Bavaria. Their bodies were left behind in various locations throughout Germany. When U.S. troops arrived in Dachau on April 29, they found 2,310 additional corpses on the train. The 816 surviving prisoners were taken to barracks within the camp."

Colucci recollected painfully that he and his fellow soldiers "saw the stoves where they burned" innocent civilian victims at Dachau. "We took some of the Germans who lived in the area and showed them – they did not know what was going on – and they were all crying.

"I don't remember too much about what happened after that."

Edward Colucci's home in Dongan Hills on Newberry Avenue upon his return from World War II.
(Photo courtesy of Edward Colucci)

BACK HOME

Colucci returned to the U.S. with fellow soldiers on a passenger ship, feeling "great."

"I couldn't wait to get home," he said, where his fiancee, Filomena Soldiveri of Rosebank, was waiting for him. "My stomach was so shrunk because I was used to having so little food."

During combat in Europe, Colucci and his fellow Army soldiers survived on K-rations, which he described as a "Cracker Jack-like box with biscuits and a very small can of food, something like hash. They gave it to us before we made any moves. But when we made invasions, they gave us high-protein chocolate bars. The only time we had a hot meal was when we were in a rest area.

"We always carried water at our side, and one blanket, and a shovel in our pack," he remembered. At every location – except for the "rest areas" – the Army soldiers dug foxholes for personal protection and sleeping. It was only in the rest areas that they enjoyed sleeping in pup tents, he said. Colucci was honorably discharged, with the rank of sergeant. in November 1945, from Fort Dix, N.J., and married his sweetheart two months after returning home.

This World War II veteran proudly notes that his Italian-born father, Nicholas, served the U.S. during the Spanish-American War, and his son, Robert, now living in Syracuse, N.Y., is a Vietnam War veteran.